On June 27, 2020, three cohorts of Lee Kuan Yew School students came together for the first-ever SIG Soirée, an evening of drinks, games and conversation among members of the School’s Social Investment Group (SIG) since its founding.
Recounting the early days of SIG, Co-Founder and President (AY 2018-19) Kundan Madireddy traced the genesis of the group to the Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE) project undertaken by a group of five Master in Public Policy (MPP) classmates. The PAE is the capstone module of the two-year MPP programme, which assesses students’ ability to leverage skills of public policy analysis, programme evaluation, and management acquired during the course. For Kundan and his batchmates, the PAE was also an important point of entry to the world of social investment, a sector they are actively engaged in to date. The five-member PAE team went on to become the first-ever Executive Committee (ExCo) of SIG, now in its third year of operations.
The baton was then passed on to Keila Halog Garcia, President (AY 2019-20) who, along with her fellow Executive Committee (ExCo) members Hylda Damayanti and Jason Brown, remain important resource-persons for SIG’s present membership. AY 2019-20 was particularly eventful for the team, in that the student group successfully collaborated for the first time with the School’s Office of Academic Affairs to organise a green finance-focused Industry Night in October 2019. The event was well attended: so much so, that Jason hopes it will pave the way for successive events of this nature, made into a regular deliverable for successive SIG executive committees.
The incoming executive committee members, Aashish Beergi, President, Chathuni Uduwela, Vice-President for Partnerships, and Gandhar Desai, Vice-President for Research and Communications are optimistic of SIG’s prospects for AY 2020-21.
Aashish expressed his gratitude towards the founding and immediate outgoing Executive Committees and shared his vision of making SIG the most inclusive and active student-led community with a high focus on cross-community and sector collaboration. Chathuni attributed her interest in SIG to her prior exposure to capital markets development and regulation, during the course of which she discovered the importance of aligning profit with purpose. Her focus for AY 2019-20 will be on the confluence of multiple stakeholders in driving social investment awareness and activity. Gandhar strives to make SIG’s work visible and spread awareness about the social investment space among LKY School students and the wider community. Gandhar also shared the first-look of the SIG’s logo.
The event set the tone for an eventful year with many activities in the pipeline, with networking events, expert talks, workshops, site-visits and regular sharing of useful information through emailers and social media channels slated to take place.
